Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The aim of my media production for my A Level portfolio was to create a conventional music video with 2 ancillary products which all followed a similar theme and style and met the criteria for my project.

The song I chose for my video was "On top of the world" by Imagine Dragons. The reason I chose this song was that there is a wide range of indie rock/pop songs in the music industry which means I had my pick of style models which I could use as inspiration for my own video. The existing music video that influenced my work was the video for "Chevy Thunder" by Spector. The reason for this was because it was a fast paced music video and quite conventional in style but also because it had interesting shots that I felt could be re-created in my own project.

When looking into whether to challenge any media conventions in my project, I researched Torodov's narrative theory. This theory stated that every/most films start with a state of equilibrium, which then gets disrupted at some point in the movie and they must return to a state of equilibrium. He stated this was the most conventional structure for films. Though I am not creating a film, the theory can still apply to a music video however, as it can still have a conventional narrative structure. I considered applying this theory to my work, however, because of the upbeat tempo and theme of my song, I didn't think having a disruption would suit my video, because of this, I developed the theory and challenged the conventional narrative structure by having the whole video as an equilibrium so to speak.

The weather of the video was quite unconventional for such a happy song, in a typical video the weather would reflect the mood of the song, so the conventional style and weather of my song should be sunny and blue skies. My video however was shot with grey skies and clouds. The reason for this was because I did not have acsess to blue skies, as I live in England. However making a dark and cloudy video somehow happy and lighthearted was not only challenging conventions but also something to overcome, which I did so by changing the contrast and hue of the clips to make everything seem brighter.

Another way I challenged media conventions was my choice of actors/actresses. I knew that I wanted my video to be about love, so instead of having a conventional heterosexual relationship, I decided to have a lesbian couple play the couple. The reason for this was because I wanted to challenge the idea of standard couples in music videos, the topic of homosexuality is sensitive in the media, as there is a big debate on how offence stereotypes are. Because of this, I did not use any lesbian stereotypes, such as making them butch or manly in any form, I wanted to focus on representing them as a couple in love, and not an offence cliche. I considered including alcohol and cigarettes in my video, however I did not want to cause a moral panic or make the couple seem like folk devils, as described by Cohen. However this worry of how I represented a lesbian couple was not a major issue in my production, for the simple reason of, though I am the gatekeeper of my work, I do not have the power or status to influence how anyone views lesbians. This is more of an issue for large conglomerates such as Warner Bros as they have alot more power and influence.